


young hearts beat in time

by hulklinging



Category: Raven Cycle - Maggie Stiefvater, Young Avengers
Genre: Abuse, Alternate Universe, Curses, F/F, F/M, Ghosts, Girls on Motorbikes, Implied/Referenced Sexual Assault, M/M, Multi, Pairing Tags To Be Added, no (main) raven cycle characters will appear, young avengers in the raven cycle world
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-04-19
Updated: 2016-07-20
Packaged: 2018-06-03 05:06:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 3
Words: 5,001
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6597880
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hulklinging/pseuds/hulklinging
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In one alternate universe, their story starts in Virginia, not New York. There are no superheroes, but the trees speak, and Something Bad still approaches.</p>
<p>(you do not need to be familiar with the raven cycle to read)</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This will be more 'scenes' than anything else. I have no plans to rewrite the whole raven cycle plot, but I will pick and choose to tell the moments where adding different characters to the same situation does cause the story to deviate from the original.

This is the story. It has already happened and it has not, as things often do in places without time.

Somewhere in the rich dirt of Virginia lays a sleeping Welsh king.

Somewhere else, there is a young girl who died alone, and as her heart stopped she heard the King whisper in her ear. She didn’t die that day, but she does decide she likes finding things. Like an arrow finding a target, like a brush with destiny.

Somewhere else, twins are born to a witch. She had seen them coming, and welcomes them with love. That won’t stop their curses from taking root, doesn’t stop their cards from reading danger, but she knows her boys will be the safest with each other. Her sisters agree. The twins grow up in a house full of family, so full that the absence of their father is hardly noticeable  They grow up like mirrors, and one gives and one takes. One will kill their true love with a kiss, one will wake the dead with a touch, but their mother can’t tell which one has which. So she tells her boys not to kiss and to be cautious of touch, and hopes that will be enough.

Somewhere else a boy grows up knowing what ‘not enough’ is like. There’s not enough money in their little trailer. There’s not enough love between his parents, who make his house feel like a warzone. And he’s caught in the middle, pulled back and forth until he feels like all his seams are splitting. He learns how to lie, hide where he comes from, the dirt of his accent and the ditches of his scars. He recreates himself, and perhaps he wouldn’t even recognize himself in a mirror, but he avoids those as a rule anyway.

Somewhere else there’s a girl born of a dream and a dreamer, made in the image of her mothers. She closes her eyes and wishes on stars and wakes up to impossible things. Everything makes sense until it doesn’t, blood in the driveway and never being able to come home. She can’t dream away the blood under her nails and the anger under her skin. She wants to smash the world to pieces but her mother forgot to teach her how.

Somewhere else there used to be a girl in love, so in love. She trusted a boy who broke her heart by breaking her neck, leaving her in the woods. Her death brings life to the land and saves a little girl who still has much to do, and when she meets the girl, all grown up, she tries to understand the trade. Sometimes she feels like she’s shrinking, so small that one day she’ll cease to exist, but being around these ones make her feel larger than life again.

Somewhere between dreams and reality, a forest is waking up. It whispers in a language no one knows yet, and six bodies unknowingly angle themselves towards it. They will all meet here, one day soon. It has already happened, and so it will again.

The trees wait.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> We meet the twins, and the plot begins.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I guess I'm continuing this. Goodness.

"So, are you Billy or Tommy today?"

Billy frowns. "I'm always Billy."

His manager laughs and shoves some menus into his hands. "Yes, but it seems like I've got you working your brother's shifts just as often as you work your own."

Billy just shrugs. Tommy has issues with sticking to a schedule. He shows up when he feels like it, and Billy comes when he doesn't. Not entirely fair, but Billy is used to his brother. He'd been dealing with him for sixteen years, after all. Anyway, Tommy always feels under the weather around this time, when the power that coats this sleepy Virginia town surges.

The door opens, which means it's time to get to work. Billy puts his twin out of his mind and focuses on the routine of waiting tables.

An hour before his shift ends, a group comes in that disrupts that. Even without the embroidered raven on their blazers, Billy would have known them to be Aglionby students. There's an air of entitlement that surrounds them. Apparently a ridiculous amount of money and a place at one of the country's most prestigious private schools can even appear to part the atmosphere. They always seem to move so easily through the world.

It does nothing for their personalities, though. Tommy has never met a raven he hasn't wanted to punch, and Billy can't really blame him. Raven boys are toxic, raven girls are poison, and really they should be avoided at all cost.

Unfortunately, Nino's is close enough to the school to be a favourite gathering place. Probably another reason Tommy tends to skip shifts. Billy sighs, reminds himself he's only got an hour left, and approaches the table.

Aglionby only went co-ed five years ago, but the girl sitting by the window looks like she was made for places like that, history in high ceilings and high grades. There's purple shades propped up on her head, and she's thumbing through a thick notebook, and she makes it look glamourous, too. The others at the table all seem to be leaning towards her, in the angles of their bodies or the tilt of their heads. She's the one that looks up when Billy approaches. The girl across from her doesn't acknowledge Billy's presence at all. She's already discarded her school jacket somewhere, showing off the big star tattoos on her shoulders. There's some design in them, a twist of knots and feathers that is dizzying to look at. She has a way of holding herself that takes up space, that screams danger. The little blonde beside her seems to almost disappear next to her. Billy's not even sure he could describe her, if he was asked. Like he'll forget all of the details of her the moment he looks away.

The lone boy at the table is the one Billy stands next to, and he's ready to ask them if they'd like to order anything when the boy looks up. Bright blue eyes and a kind smile offset the bruise he's sporting on one cheek, and Billy feels himself going red.

See, Tommy has a problem with Raven boys. Their attitudes and their fancy cars that he's always itching to test. But Billy. Billy has a Problem with them. Especially ones like this, beautiful boys who appear to have it all, from where he's standing. Beautiful boys who smile at him absentmindedly, maybe, and then push at their friend's shoulders and call someone a fag before they're out of earshot.

It's the uniform's fault, Billy thinks. Everyone just looks so damn good in it.

"Hello," he says, finding his voice again. "Is there anything I can get started for you?"

He gets their orders and gets away from their table as quickly as possible, and tries to ignore them for the rest of his shift. He's not very good at it. They pitch their voices low whenever he walks past them, but as he's bringing them their bill, five minutes before the end of his shift, he swears he hears one of them say St. Mark's Eve. Which doesn't make sense. It's not something most people know about. Even if they know about it, it's not something anyone really talks about. For all the families in town, it's a normal night, after all.

All families but Billy's, that is.

But of course, the family that lives at 300 Fox Way is not a normal family.

By the time Billy gets home, Tommy is already buzzing around the house. It's a weird time of year for him, because he can't technically feel the power building around them, but he also can't sleep well for weeks. Billy feels it, like an itch behind his eyes, like walking through a cobweb. It's not the kind of cobweb he wants to brush away, though. Last time he did that, Lorna threw out a whole tarot deck. She said they felt empty, and were no good now.

Billy's better, now. He knows what magic feels like, and knows what to do to let it be. He's not sure how the house dealt with both him and Tommy running around when they were younger, although they probably mostly just cancelled each other out.

"Who's going with you this year?" He asks his twin, who is currently hanging off of his loft bed by his knees, headphones in. They must not be on that loud, because Tommy opens an eye when he enters their room.

"Mom was gonna, but then Uncle Pete showed up, and they locked themselves in the phone room."

"When did Uncle Pete get here?" That's weird.

"I dunno. I came home from school and he was here."

Weird. Uncle Pete was actually their uncle, unlike a lot of the aunts and cousins that lived at 300 Fox Way. He was their mother's twin, and liked to disappear for months at a time. There were a few years there that he didn't show up at all, with only a phone call or two to prove he was still alive. He's the only male who spends any time at the house, aside from the two of them. He isn't very fond of what the ladies of Fox Way do, which is why he doesn't spend much time here, or at least that's Billy's guess. He can't imagine going that long without seeing Tommy. As often as they argue, they've never spent more than a few days apart (and things got weird, too. It was a school trip, Billy can't even remember where Tommy was, but he had a headache the whole time, ended up blacking out in the middle of class. When he woke up, two days had passed, and Tommy was waiting at his bedside. "Drama queen," he'd muttered, but he'd looked as pale and exhausted as Billy had felt. They didn't go on any extended school trips apart, after that).

"Illyana must love that," is his only response. Illyana is one of their cousins who isn't actually related to them. She's from Russia, a few years older than them and generally terrifying. She also takes the most shifts answering the psychic hotline that they run out of one of the rooms. She's a big hit on it, both for her accuracy and her accent.

"Lorna sent her to the store. Said if she was going to pace for hours she may as well pace on over to the grocery store and be useful."

Billy snorts, and goes to collapse on his own bed. He has homework to do, and should probably change out of his work clothes, but he's tired. The itching behind his eyes is driving him crazy, and he just wants to sleep until it goes away.

"Nervous about tonight?"

"Are you kidding me?" Tommy drops down from his upside-down perch, and spends a moment untangling his mangled headphone cords. "All I do is stare into space while one of the aunts talks to dead people. It's boring. I can't even bring music."

"Not dead people yet," Billy reminds him. Tommy just rolls his eyes at his twin.

While the ladies of Fox Way offer a host of different psychic readings and fortunes told, there is one that isn't on any of the signs, one that the locals only find out about by word of mouth. It's one unique to them, as far as they know, made possible by the unique layout of Henrietta, the joining of ley lines and an old church that happens to sit on one of them. Every St. Mark's Eve, one of them goes to the church and watches the shadows of the soon-to-die walk the ley line. If someone was born here and will die in the next twelve months, they might be seen walking the path as the clock strikes midnight. Some of the locals pay a small fee to be told if they are on the list or not, every year. Tommy finds that fact very creepy, but Billy thinks he understands. It would be nice, to have a bit of warning.

Billy's never gone, so the whole thing seems very mystical to him. Tommy's been going the last few years, there to scribe and to amplify the power that's already present. He acts like he hates it, but Billy knows better than to believe him. It's nice, being able to help out with the family business. Billy's a little jealous, if he's being honest. There's not much a non-psychic can do to help out a psychic business, even one that amplifies power and sight. But even that is more helpful than someone who takes away power, which is what Billy does. He has to be careful what he touches, when he ventures into the rest of the house. Some places, like Lorna's personal sitting room, or the attic where Ruth spends most of her time, are completely off limits. It's frustrating and alienating, but Billy doesn't let himself be bothered by it much, anymore. It's just another thing to add to the list of why he always feels a little left out. A boy in a house of almost all girls? Check. A kid with no dad? Check. A twin with a weird dependance on his brother? Check. A badly-closeted gay boy in small-town Virginia? Check.

"Wake me up when you get back?" Billy asks, and then rolls over. He'll change into pyjamas later. He's just so tired. Power is exhausting, when it surrounds him like this, and work was long after a long day at school, and he has to do it all again tomorrow. He can let himself fall asleep early, just for today.

It's hours later when he wakes up, and he sits up as Tommy kicks open the door. He doesn't make a sound as he moves across the room, and instead of climbing up to his own bed, he comes to sit next to Billy. He looks far away, in the early morning moonlight, and Billy touches his shoulder in concern.

"Tommy?"

Tommy turns his head to look at Billy, his mouth all twisted into a smile that looks terribly fake.

"Uncle Pete ended up coming with us."

Billy frowns. Uncle Pete would probably be as likely to see anything as Tommy. He's never been told it straight out, but he'd always assumed Uncle Pete was like them. No sight.

"Mom was okay with that?"

Tommy shrugs. "She didn't say much."

That can't be why Tommy looks so stressed, then. Billy grabs his blanket and throws it over the both of them. Sometimes Tommy got stuck thinking about too many things at once, and needed to block the rest of the world out. When they were little they would make complex blanket forts and play at telling each other's futures. Now, the blanket forts are usually just this, a heavy comforter over the two of them as they sit across from each other, when Billy is feeling too empty to get out of bed or the world gets too overwhelming for Tommy. They used to poke fun at each other for needing it, but neither of them stopped, and they don't even do that anymore. Sometimes the world is just a lot, and they need to make it smaller. Shrink it down until it's just the two of them. Maybe it's a twin thing, like making up a language only the two of them can speak. A way to distance yourself from the rest of the world.

The 'what's wrong' goes unspoken, but Tommy knows what Billy's asking.

"I saw someone," he says, voice soft. Tommy likes to play at being a badass, picking fights, getting a reputation for being a problem child. But Billy knows most of those fights start with someone talking shit about Tommy's family, or making a rape joke, or picking on someone who can't fight back. Tommy likes to pretend he doesn't give a shit, but he cares a lot about a lot of things. It would make sense, then, that he would be shaken by seeing someone who's going to die.

"Did you get their name?"

"Bishop. She was our age, Billy. Maybe younger. Aglionby sweater." Tommy shifts, hands balling into fists. "That's fucked up, right? People our age aren't supposed to die. That's fucked."

Billy doesn't mention that it happens all the time. Accidents, sickness, murder, the emptiness that Billy is all too familiar with.

"I'm sorry," is all he can think of to say. "You're right. It's fucked up."

Tommy nods, like that's all he needs to hear, and then he's shoving the covers away from him.

"I'm going on a run," he says, and Billy doesn't point out that they've both got school tomorrow, or that technically they're both supposed to work the closing shift tomorrow, so he can't cover for his brother's shift this time. He gets up, and goes to get his backpack.

"I'll wait up," he says. He needs to get this homework done anyway.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> We meet Bishop.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning for allusions to sexual assault/non-permanent murder.
> 
> Also please check out [the beautiful art I got for last chapter!](http://freelanceplatypus.tumblr.com/post/147628053876/i-know-lets-just-take-two-things-i-love-and)

Kate is not a dreamer.

Not that anyone would really expect her to be, with every movement oozing money, her edges polished by privilege. People write her off as spoiled, another shallow rich girl. It used to bother her, back before she realized that being dismissed so easily just made it easier to do what she wanted to do.

If people think they can know her in a glance, she has a lot more time on her hands, after all.

Sometimes when she's feeling particularly introspective she grits her teeth at how much of her is made up of things she handpicked to go against the grain of her father. She wanted for nothing, in terms of what money could buy her. So of course her all consuming hobby is finding things that money can't get her. Still, she can't really fault herself for that. There's something addictive, holding something she earned all by herself in her hands.

She digs in her heels and digs into the dirt of the world and loves the feel of dirt under her manicure and with every new discovery she feels a little more like a real girl, a little more grounded.

Well, as real as she can be.

She doesn't think about it, or pretends she doesn't, when she's awake. But in her dreams it catches up to her, footsteps echoing her own as she walks back through the park. Old enough to be out that late but not old enough to know better.

She doesn't -

She doesn't remember much.

Sometimes, she is thankful for that. Sick to her stomach but thankful.

She doesn't remember much, but she remembers after. The dying.

Her vision is going. She's just off the path, so close to home, would have been there in under ten minutes, and now she'll be bled out in five.

The voice echoes in her head in the silence left by her heartbeat.

It says she will live, because someone else will not.

It says she lives by the will of the king.

The next thing she's aware of is waking up. There's blood around her, but where she was bleeding there are only scars. She pulls her shirt down to cover them, finds the shoe she must have lost in the… struggle, and doesn't let herself fall apart until she gets home.

The clothes she was wearing are stained with blood, and she throws everything away but her scarf, which is hidden away in the back of her closet. She only takes it out when nothing feels real, when she needs to remember that it actually happened, that she's destined for something more.

She doesn't tell anyone. Not about the dying. Not for years. The closest she gets is a quiet 'I felt like I was dying' to one of her therapists, but all she gets is a kind assurance that there's nothing unusual about that. When she gets stressed she thinks for a second she can hear her heart stop again, and there's nothing normal about that, so she nods and stops saying so much in her sessions. By the time she's moving out (off to boarding school, you're not moving out, stop being so dramatic), she's told her father she doesn't need the therapist sessions anymore. He's distantly proud of her resilience. Everything about him is distant, like her mother was what was keeping him connected to the world, and now that she's gone he's adrift in an empty home. She doesn't miss him.

She doesn't miss anyone, doesn't let herself, fills up the hole in her chest with things people would call impossible, with things no one else could find. It doesn't stop the hole from aching when she has to walk home alone (she buys a purple bug because her father hates it and hey, she likes purple), or when she stares at someone and they don't look away (sunglasses become her signature, a wall between her and the world), but it helps. It all helps.

Henrietta is a strange town. She spent a little time in it when she was younger, her father is a proud Aglionby Academy alum, after all. And with them now accepting girls it is easy enough to convince him she should go. She ignores the comment about how it's really gone to the dogs, because this is a compromise. She'll stay in one place for the last two years of high school, instead of trekking across the globe. Her father doesn't know that the lines she's been following lead here, might even cross somewhere in the town limits.

Her father doesn't know much about her at all.

It feels right, this town. She feels closer to the king she's chasing than ever. She forgoes the student housing for an old warehouse her father already owns, makes the drive from New York to Virginia in late July, and feels in control behind the wheel.

She's there a week before she means America Chavez.

Their meeting goes like this.

"That is an ugly car, princess."

Kate scowls at the figure on the bike. She's usually a bit friendlier in a new town, but she's been waiting for a tow truck for over half an hour now, and it is _hot_ , and it was amusing when her car broke down where her father could see it, but he's states away and she's basically stranded right now.

"I'm not a princess," she says, and the girl laughs. Kate doesn't know about bikes, but she knows that this one looks beautiful, the metal tinted red in a way that makes it look like it's still hot from a forge, all sharp lines and well tuned power. The girl astride it is rougher, dark curly hair tangled and pushed to one side to show the undercut over her ear, gold earrings standing out against her brown skin, and her leather jacket has silver studs in the shapes of stars. She's arresting, dangerous, just as many sharp pieces as her ride, and Kate has to push her sunglasses up her face to hide the nervous energy that courses through her under this girl's gaze.

"Sure looks like it. Your chariot's turned into a pumpkin and everything."

"And you… what? Stopped to make fun of me?"

She tosses her hair in a way Kate wants to memorize, because when she tosses her hair it looks like some sort of commercial, but when this girl does it it looks like she's prepping for a fight. One she will win without breaking a sweat.

"I came to offer you a ride."

This catches Kate by surprise. She leans back against the hood of her car, trying to look nonchalant. "I'm waiting for my tow."

"Yeah?" She mimes checking a watch. "How long's that been?"

Kate actually does check the time, and frowns at her phone. Like if she expresses her disappointment with enough vitriol, it won't have been forty five minutes since she made that call.

"…Actually, I would appreciate a ride to mine," she admits. "If the offer still stands."

"Hop on, then."

Kate eyes the bike. Taking into account the fact that she's supposed to ride it makes it look even more dangerous.

Still, fast. Her dad would hate it.

She grins. "Do you have an extra helmet?"

The stranger hands off her own helmet. "Just don't hold on too tight and make me crash, and we'll be fine."

Right. She'll have to wrap her arms around the girl. That's how this works.

She doesn't like close contact. It makes her think. Heart stopping, fingers growing cold. It makes her think too much.

She needs to stop thinking.

She gets on the bike, wraps her arms tight around her, and focuses on her breathing.

"What's your name, princess?"

Kate thinks about the shape her name makes in the dark, about strangers calling it out and how it makes her flinch, about how her father likes to pretend her sister is an only child, sometimes.

"Bishop."

The girl laughs. It's a strange laugh, like it's being shaken loose somewhere deep inside her, like it's not often used. Bishop feels it more than she hears it.

"America Chavez."

Anything else Bishop is going to say is eaten by the helmet, tossed away by the wind as they jolt into motion.

Bishop doesn't know where they're going, but it doesn't matter. It feels like the right one.

 

* * *

 

Bishop has been here for almost a year, now. A year that feels like an age, when she stops to think. She sits on the ground, recorder running beside her, and stares up at the stars. More stars here than in New York. More space for something.

Often she's more interested in what the ground can show her, but every once in a while she remembers to look up and wonder at the sky.

She wishes one of her friends could have come out with her. But America said no, and they're trying not to push her, not since…

Anyway.

And if America is staying, then Cassie is too, because someone has to be home,  and Cassie had no interest in sitting alone in the woods at night.

Teddy she didn't even bother to ask. She knows he has a late shift, and she knows his father knows exactly when it ends, and how long exactly it will take him to get home. They've been out late too often lately, and Bishop hates seeing that moment of excitement in his eyes before he shuts it down again.

Bishop can find things everyone else says don't exist, but she can't help the friends right in front of her. She can't even tease Teddy about the way his eyes followed that waiter at Nino's today without his shoulders coming up, like he's trying to melt away. She wants to say 'no one cares if you like boys', she wants to admit that she herself isn't exactly straight, but she doesn't know how to say that without giving away someone else's secret, so she just smiles and hides behind her sunglasses and talks about Spanish class and how she can't wrap her head around a particular verb conjugation and could America help her out with it, maybe? And would everyone be up for a foray into the mountains this weekend, because she has a hunch about a cave system she found marked on an old map that isn't on the newer ones, and America rolls her eyes and Cassie smiles but doesn't say a word and Teddy sits up a little straighter and she does what she can.

She dozes off and wakes up gasping, hand grabbing at her neck to check her own pulse. It's there, racing away from the dream, and she looks at her watch to see that it's almost six. She should get moving, if she wants to shower before school. Honestly, she probably slept just as well as she would have at home, if not better. Sleep is not a thing she partakes in often.

Her recorder has hit the end of the tape. She lets it play back as she drives, the static and crickets soothing.

Then, a voice.

Her voice.

"Bishop," says the girl on the tape, in her own voice. "That's all there is."

Bishop pulls over, staring at the recorder. Rewinds it. Plays it again.

It's the same. It's really there, and it's real, and she feels goosebumps erupt on her arms. It doesn't sound like directionless sleep talking. There's a space between her name and that strange piece of a phrase, like she's responding to something the recorder missed.

She rewinds it again, listens closely, but there's nothing else. She does a bit of rough math, and the voice was recorded sometime just after midnight. As soon as she realizes that, she opens her glove box, throws it in there, and shuts it. She turns on the radio with shaky fingers, and hums along to whatever song is blasting through her speakers.

She was still awake when that voice was recorded.

This is proof. Proof of… something. Something that had to do with this town, with the ley lines that cross it. Maybe even something to do with the king that is supposed to be buried here, the one she owes for the blood pulsing through her veins.

"We will find you," she mutters to herself, as she pulls into the Aglionby parking lot. And when they do, she's got questions to ask. Why she was special, what she was supposed to do now. But first, they find him.

Lately, it's all she can think about. Like nothing else matters. Like her life won't fully restart until she can stare her savior in the face.

But until then, she pastes on her rich girl smile, and gets out of the car to join her classmates.


End file.
